You have to feel for Stephen Harper, and not just because he has three crates of unused "I'm Prime Minister Harper, who are you?" bumper stickers getting moldy in the Stornoway basement. For not only is he still stuck on the wrong side of the House of Commons, and head of a party with more loose cannons than an Iraqi wedding, but he is a man who is destined to live, work, serve, and tell impossibly dull dinner party jokes in a country he seems not to like very much.

It makes you want to send the poor fellow an open plane ticket and box of travel brochures; anything to let the man get away and put a smile on his face.

And one would suspect he'd head south to Texas quicker than a homesick armadillo, given half the chance. For south is where Stephen's fiscal and moral heart lies. His admiration for all things Bush, Republican, and fundamentally Bible-belt Christian knows no bounds outside of mid-election rhetoric and CBC interviews. Watching him wax poetic about American taxation, senatorial effectiveness and military might is like watching someone in the depths of reverie over a childhood puppy.

Stephen Harper would like nothing more than to turn Canada into a tax cutting, military spending, private health care machine with a sensitivity towards gay rights straight out of the Jerry Falwell playbook, and seems to be oblivious to the absolute havoc the present US fascination with all things supply-side and incendiary has wreaked both at home and abroad.

But evidently, what's good for America is good for us, at least as long as you can afford health insurance, fall into in the upper tax brackets, are God fearing (but no turbans, please) and have no need of a flu shot this winter.

The Harper Vision doesn't stop there, though. No, at the rate he's going, Canada should be nothing more than cartographer's memory by next year, for if he has left his heart not so much in San Francisco but Houston, then he's lost his mind somewhere over Antwerp.

Apparently, the Belgian constitution should be the new blueprint for the Canadian Union...all 198 articles of it. Not happy with the fragile state of détente between federalists and their currently disorganized separatist counterparts, Harper has decided that the best way to heal the nation's wounds is to pick at the scabs with a constitutional road map that requires three degrees to decipher, a half-dozen square kilometres of old-growth forest to print, and the sleight of hand of Houdini to implement. It is a vision that tries to accommodate the linguistic, geographical, and national realities of a tiny little lawmaker's piece of patchwork in one complicated, codified push for unity, and while it has probably staved off civil war and a subsequent surge in world chocolate prices, Belgium is a nation far from unified or at ease with itself.

And Belgium has never had to deal with Jacques Parizeau.

Ah, but Stephen sure seems eager to do so, or at least to make deals with his federal counterpart in the form of one Gilles Duceppe, he of great hair, blunt summation, and nationalist aspiration. Yet, it is rather odd to see Harper, leader of the supposedly only national alternative to the Liberals, forming allegiances with separatists and spearheading discussions for constitutional reform based on little more than a cursory look at a flawed foreign system whose only real promise is better waffles for breakfast.

And while he would probably love for "Asymmetrical Federalism" to turn into "Autonomous Union" for every province in Canada, accompanied by massive tax cuts and a hand-picked federal judiciary leaning so far right they're likely to not only stop interpreting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but strike it down, one has to wonder what it is exactly that he dislikes so much about us.

Are we perfect? Hardly, especially with the man of a thousand visions currently at the helm, but before Martin opened the separation door with the recent health care accord, and now with Harper seemingly eager to kick it wide open, there was a truce, albeit an uneasy one, in this land. And compared to our biggest neighbour, the rest of the G8, and certainly the land of the ten-ton constitution, we're prosperous, healthy, and stable, with nary an imperialist intention in sight...which I, unlike Mr. Harper, happen to think is quite a good thing, oppressive taxation or not.

But perhaps all that is necessary is for someone to find a map and point out to Stephen that our capital's name is Ottawa. It's not Washington, Mr. Harper, and it's certainly not Brussels.